Recipient of the 2016 Archival Innovator Award from the Society of American Archivists

The Oriental Institute’s Integrated Database Project aims to provide public access to information about the diverse research and object-based collections managed and cared for by the Oriental Institute via an online Collections Search. The project began in 2005 and has involved migrating data from the older databases to our new KE EMu (Electronic Museum) database. For public access to information about the Oriental Institute's collections, a public website portal was created and functional development to this "front end" will continue for the foreseeable future to provide access to more data and improve user experience.

The Oriental Institute would like to thank the following donors for their generous support:

Updates

February 2018: Limit description field on search results display and add feedback form to details view for all records

January 2018: Launch of a new tab for the Epigraphic Survey, including 21,502 digitized images from the large format negatives collection, including keyword faceting

December 2017: Added display, search fields, facets, and browse capability for metadata related to inscriptions, including transliteration and translation

October 2017: Added save and download functionality to all departments; files can be downloaded in .csv format for manipulation in word processing and spreadsheet applications

August 2017: Added search options and facet refinements for filtering items that are online, type of access (open vs. subscription), and for Research Archives records for book reviews; rearranged Research Archives details view to present title field at the top

June 2017: Incorporated Google Analytics statistics data to site and site searches; reconfigured single-page application to multi-page application and removed robots.txt for search engine optimization; added ability to open individual records in separate tabs

September 2016: Over 6,000 CAMEL records go live to the public on the Search Our Collections site, including thousands of declassified satelitte images and digitized maps, for which an Esri Leaflet viewer displays the global areas bounded by the map and the associated GIS files can be downloaded as a .zip file

May 2016: It was announced that Dr. Foy Scalf, Head of the Integrated Database Project, will receive the 2016 Archival Innovator Award from the Society of American Archivists in recongition for the progress and success of the Oriental Institute Integrated Database Project (see News article)

January 2016: Update to display joins between records in the Research Archives catalog for bibliographic items attached to Museum Collection and Museum Archives records (and vice versa); included in the update is display of joins between records for reviews and the volume under review (and vice versa) along with display of attached citations

September 2015: Upgrade to Solr 4.10.4

June 2015: Launch of Museum Archives tab including over 4000 records covering material from the archival collections

February 2015: Smart tabs feature enabled, only tabs with results will display and tabs without results will be hidden, search all tab removed, search all multimedia field added

December 2014: Online Collections Search page redesigned with the following features: query builder moved to top of the page, highlights provided in a rotating slideshow, browse galleries options sorted alphabetically

Project History:

2014-2016 Phase 3: Migration of CAMEL Lab and Museum Archives into KE EMu database and development of two additional tabs on website portal for CAMEL and Museum Archives along with geo-spatial search capabilities for CAMEL data, supported by an IMLS Museums for America Grant

2012-2014 Phase 2: Migration of Photographic Archives (100,000+ records) and Museum Conservation (10,000+ records) into KE EMu database and development of third tab on website portal for Photographic Archives with links between Museum Registration records and Photographic Archives records, supported by an IMLS Museums for America Grant

2010-2012 Phase 1: Migration of Research Archives (400,000+ records) and Museum Registration (250,000+ records) into KE EMu database and development of beta website portal with two tabs for Research Archives and Museum Registration data silos, supported by an IMLS Museums for America grant